"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Friday, September 09, 2011

The Law Is A Ass

I'll save you the trouble. The shorter version is: "Suffer, you bastards, suffer!" "Bastards," of course, being whoever your group isn't. This is not even Rawls' "original position" and First and Second Principles of Justice. This is just sort of a weird "everyone who has more than I do should have less!"

What, I would first ask, is "prosperity" anyway? Isn't it "when I have a little more than I do today?" Isn't the prosperous man the one who anticipates having more tomorrow than he does right now? Is he really prosperous because he has enough? Is enough ever enough, or is it enough because it will be as much, or more, tomorrow? A man who lives off his investments, after all, is constantly anticipating tomorrow at least replacing what he used today, if not providing a little more. Isn't that "prosperity"?

Which is another way of saying "scarcity," only for thee and not for me. These aren't the golden laws of prosperity. They are just variations on the iron law of "Blow you, Jack! I got mine!" Maybe a little more egalitarian than that, but no more conventional and no less radical (i.e., going to the root), for all that. No, you want radical, you gotta go down deep, right down to the base of the problem.

He said to them, "When you pray, you should say:

Father, your name be revered.Impose your imperial rule.Provide us with the bread we need day by day.Forgive our sins, since we too forgive everyone in debt to us.And please don't subject us to test after test."(Luke 11:2-4, SV)

As for that "imperial rule," it would look something like this:

"Come for water, all who are thirsty;though you have no money, come, buy grain and eat;come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price.Why spend your money for what is not foodyour earnings on what fails to satisfy?Listen to me and you will fare well,you will enjoy the fat of the land. (Isaiah 55:1-2)